Day 29 - change of plans

We made a decision yesterday afternoon to leave our campsite a day early as it was not the place for us and we’d rather cut our losses and move on somewhere less overcrowded and overwhelming.
It seems the campsite won’t turn people away even if they are full, but will let them park up on any free space for the night until a pitch becomes free the next day. I counted four randoms at least, given how smushed in we already were, it actually felt unsafe.
So we found a site just outside Turin (Camping Bella Torino) that’s in the countryside, has big pitches separated by hedges and is in the right direction for us to get to the south of France. They are also part of the ACSI scheme so essentially the dog and electricity are for free.
So we had an easy morning, it was raining but I walked up to the supermarket to pick up lunch and dinner supplies. By the time I got back it was dry so we took Marla out for a wander up and down the lake shore for the last time. It’s not the nicest as there’s a lot of driftwood washed up and it’s a very stoney beach so you have to watch your footing. Marla really enjoyed sniffing absolutely everything though, so that’s good!
We headed back to the van for lunch and then did our pre-flight checks and headed off. For the first time in ages we decided to do the drive straight through and not look for a half way leg stretch. It was about 2.5 hours, the first hour going through villages with millions of roundabouts, then we hit the open road (toll roads). Thankfully we had a much better experience this time and we were charged the right amount at each toll! We’ve not heard back from our request for a refund, but the automated reply said that they aim to reply to 85% of requests within 10 days 😂
We arrived late afternoon and instantly knew we’d made the right decision in moving on early. We are surrounded by open fields, cows, clouds that look like T-Rex’s and everyone is a good distance away from each other!
We made a korma for dinner, finishing off the little bag of frozen Quorn we bought with us. For pudding we walked a few minutes up the road to La Fattoria del Gelato, where they make and sell their own gelato on site. I had Coffee and Tiramisu and Charlie had Fior di latte and caramelised almonds. They were absolutely delicious and worth the terrifying walk along the road to get there… for a small back road, it was very busy and Marla had a big freak out at one point and almost took Charlie down. And there were a few dogs in gardens that did not like us walking past and did not hold back in letting us know! Anyhoo… we got there and back in one piece and we might even stop in again tomorrow morning on the way out of town!Read more